Being an entrepreneur can be really stressful. As an entrepreneur, you are required to stay on the go, striving for success. Have you ever found yourself asking, “Where did the day go?” Even though you know you were on your toes all day long, many small and irrelevant tasks capture a lot of your valuable time. These wasted minutes and hours are the time that could have been used to something productive.
In between 100 million things to do, time wasting is the last thing any entrepreneur would like to do. Replying to an email or checking social media may seem like a simple five-minute task, but remember time is money. Here are some of the biggest time wasters to look for that can distract your daily progress.
#1 Communication mediums
Text messages, calls and emails are the most time-consuming activity throughout the day. Unless the communication you receive is highly critical, do not interrupt any of your tasks to address random contacts. In fact, you can set aside an hour from your entire day to quickly manage your emails, texts and missed calls.
#2 Social media
Social media has become an integral part of our lives from the past few years. As an entrepreneur, it is important to engage social media in your entrepreneurial activities. However, spending too much time on the social media platforms during a day can lead to much destruction. Try writing your social media posts early in the day and wait to read the responses by the end of the day. This will help you keep a check on your time consumption in social media. You can also consider some good scheduling services like HootSuite, for the same.
#3 To be a multitasker
Other than being an entrepreneur, you are also a human being. Trying to do multiple tasks at a time will divert your focus and give you lower quality results. Remember, doing more than one task at a time is near to impossible. Rather than switching between two or more different tasks, concentrate your mind and body on one task. This will not only give high-quality results but save much time. Complete one task and then move to the next.
#4 Outdated resources
If you do not have adequate software or equipment to accomplish a task, you will see yourself spending more time in completing one task. This happens because you try to overcome your limited resources and spend more time in making adjustments rather than focusing on the primary task.
#5 Saving pennies
As an entrepreneur, it is quite obvious that you would love to save every penny. However, it is proven that you can either focus on saving pennies or making money, not both. If you try too hard to save money, you will yourself notice a mental shift, which will eventually lower your focus on developing new ideas. As said by Tom Shieh, Chief Visionary Officer, crimcheck.com, “if you cannot pay someone $20, $50 or $100 per hour to accomplish a task. This can free up your space to dedicate to high-priority tasks and revenue creating tasks; probably you are never going to earn more than that”.
#6 Making assumptions
You know your startup is a dream come true and you run hard to achieve your goals. However, expecting your employees to react in the same way and follow your footsteps, may be a big mistake. You must realise that, to make your employees as focused as you are, you need to share the full strategic plan and importance of every step taken. Announcing a “Mission statement” to your team and assuming they understand what exactly you need is a big time waster. Gather everyone, ask them what they are doing and why acknowledging their hard work and communicating what your goals are is the best way to bring your team together.
#7 Excess meetings
We understand meetings are necessary and often helpful, but they are also one of the leading causes of failure in time management. Hence, when it comes to time management, 90% of the meetings held on a daily basis, are not required. Try to wrap up lengthy meetings that last more than an hour, within half an hour or less. Make sure the meeting you are about to attend is helpful and productive for your business. If you can, delegate some of the meetings to your co-workers. Be mindful of which meeting you need to attend and how you would like to handle them.
#8 Being a perfectionist
As an entrepreneur, many of us have a habit of correcting thing again and again. However, you should never spend too much of your valuable time into perfecting the products that have not yet been validated in the market. This will eventually slow down product launches, less agile team, wastage of money and moreover less flexibility of better ideas.
As per Kevin Yamazaki, Founder and CEO of Sidebench, focusing on a product’s key value proposition instead of regular updating, will help you launch a simple yet viable product at the right time. Instead of spending your funds and time on over-thinking and over-engineering, use them for a better idea and product development.
#9 Ambiguity
The process and infrastructure used in your startup are mostly drafted and planned. However, this method is likely followed in the first few years of your business operations. The first few years are very crucial as most of the unaccounted situations are handled at this time. New entrepreneurs do not think about every variable they are going to encounter. Some of them even skip the accountability of many responsibilities and roles they need to take care of. This is when ambiguity comes into existence and eventually it leads to the misconception of what needs to be handled when it is to be done and by whom. Remedy to this issue is to document as many processes as you can.
If you are looking for a perfect productivity day, it will never come. There is no such day as a perfect productivity day. No matter how much you try to control your to-do list and organisation, you will see a rolling list of tasks to accomplish by the end of the day. To deal with your stress, find out a positive way and accept that you cannot conquer the world in a day.
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